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5 Smoldering Questions: The Red-Faced Edition

Once again Hombre is unavailable, but the embarrassment referred to by the post title is for the Steelers, not for Going Deep. Let’s see what you all think. Please keep it printable…

In yesterday’s postI wrote about the 2008 Steelers loss in Philly. As we all know, they went from strength to strength after that, eventually winning the Super Bowl. The questions mostly have to do with the comparison to this season. Bearing that in mind, here they are:

1. Be as honest as you can. It’s very easy to let subsequent events color your memory of a past event, but that said, how do you recall you felt after that game? Did you think the Steelers weren’t very good? Did it feel like the season was over? Or did you feel it was a blip on the radar?

2. The two teams the Steelers beat this season in Weeks 1 and 2 appear to be better than the 8-8 Houston Texans and 4-12 Cleveland Browns of 2008. Does this make you feel better or worse?

3. Next week’s opponent is, according to almost everyone, going to attack the Steelers in exactly the same fashion that Philly did so successfully last week. How do you rate the comparative coaching acumen of Andy Reid to that of Doug Pederson, the abilities of Alex Smith as a quarterback compared to Carson Wentz, and the fierceness of the Kansas City defense as compared to that of the Eagles?

4. The Steelers played the toughest schedule in the NFL in 2008 and earned a bye week. How does the difficulty of this season’s opponents appear to compare with the 2008 schedule? [In case you don’t happen to have the schedule at the forefront of your mind, the opponents are, in addition to the usual AFC North suspects, the 2-1 Chiefs, 1-2 Jets, 1-2 Dolphins, 3-0 Patriots, 2-1 Cowboys, 1-2 Colts, 2-1 Giants and 1-2 Bills.]

5. The Eagles “only” sacked Ben Roethlisberger four times in 61 offensive plays. (And boy, were some of them offensive…) In 2008 the Eagles sacked Roethlisberger eight times, and Byron Leftwich once, in 66 offensive plays. Does this mean Roethlisberger is better at getting the ball out of his hand, the offensive line is better now, or something else?

Bonus question: Did you make any mojo-related mistakes? I certainly did, eating tacos at Beba’s after six days (on Saturday) instead of on game day. My daughter-in-law, whom I love very dearly, did also move the Terrible Towel from its display position in the living room, although she immediately restored it after the gravity of this was explained to her. Is there anything you can blame yourself for, except perhaps for wasting four hours or so of your life watching Sunday’s debacle?

Sorry to make you think about this again. Hopefully next week we will have a less embarrassing game to discuss…

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6 comments

1. If i recall correctly, I thought we were not going to make the playoffs, considering how dismal our offensive line was.

2. It doesn’t make me feel any better or worse. This year’s team I have the utmost faith in. This was such a bad beating I can’t take it as any more than a blip at this point.

3. As Doug Pederson is a brand new coach, I can’t really begin to compare him to a coach who has been around for so long. Again, it is kind of an apples to oranges comparison as I don’t think Wentz has the portfolio of work yet to really compare him to anyone, though from what we have seen so far he looked like he would be in the league awhile.

4. 2008 schedule was historically difficult. I don’t think this year’s schedule is going to be anything close to that.

5. Regardless of the sack totals, our offensive line is much better than it was at this point in 2008. Also, Ben is a better quarterback than he was back then.

Bonus – I don’t think I made any Mojo mistakes, but I think CBS did, which affected my mojo. After the ravens game they switched over to the end of the browns game for the interim between the 1pm and 4:25pm games. One would think that once the 4:25 game (Steelers) was starting, they would switch over to that game, but no. They stayed with the browns and dolphins dismal 4th quarter and overtime and then went to the late game broadcast, thus starting coverage with 5 minutes to go in the 1st quarter. This caused those not in the ‘Burgh without direct tv and sunday nfl ticket to miss a good chunk of the game.

1. I remember thinking that we would not go too far with such a terrible O-line, and especially also after the Giants game that season which had a similar look and feel. Boy was I wrong.

2. Neither. That was then, this is now.

3. I’m more confident that Andy Reid will screw something up because all the Chiefs and Philly fans say so. Alex Smith is a guy that for some reason we always have trouble with. Carson Wentz is playing like him right now, although Wentz has a much higher ceiling. The thing that worries me about this game is that the Chiefs are built to run a game that involves long time consuming drives which keeps their defense fresh. This then reduces the number of drives in the game and therefore our ability to rack up points, and which also reduces the number of chances we have to recover from mistakes (e.g., turnovers). You have to play mistake-free ball and score on your early drives against KC to win these games, otherwise the game’s dynamic plays into their hands. I’m not confident in our ability to do that right now.

4. Our schedule this year is so much easier than 2008 – it’s not even close.

5. Our o-line and o-line coaching is much better now than it was back then.

Bonus: I had my home #7 jersey on and started by drinking Strongbow. Towards the end of the 2nd quarter when things started looking worrisome, I brought out the single malt to stem the tide. That, of course, did nothing (for the Steelers). In the third quarter, I switched to beer (Waterloo dark), which was a disaster (for the Steelers). Not sure what more to do – my kung fu was not good enough on Sunday.

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